Takeda

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A frustrating control scheme and lifeless playing field will leave you wistfully thinking of Shogun.

By IGN Staff

While I'm always excited to get something new to play in a non-European medieval setting, it unfortunately doesn't mean that I stay excited. Such is the case with Xicat and Magitech's latest entry into the real time strategy market. With Takeda, it looks as though they were hoping to capture some of the folks that had such a good time playing the amazing Shogun: Total War and transfer them over into their own feudal Japan real time strategy game. But don't be fooled; this is no Shogun. Sure there are lots of units on the battlefield. Sure it's got some of the same sort of features. But this 2D version is nowhere near as complete or fun as its 3D counterpart. Production values seem to have been forgotten and control decisions are downright annoying.

The main part of Takeda, the campaign, follows the story of House Takeda and it's rise to dominance in feudal Japan. As you progress through the levels, you'll have to face various houses on your way to dominance and crush them on the field of battle. Over the course of the campaign, you'll have to face some tough decisions, but nothing that can't be overcome with a little bit of bloodletting. This game doesn't focus on an overland map with the movement of troops like Shogun did, but instead chooses to focus on the here and now of the real time struggles. This makes the campaign linear, but without the interaction of dialogue and story that make the characters human, the linear campaign just makes the game even more stagnant.

You have a couple of choices on the overland map. Here you can choose to enter the next mission or let your men rest. If you let your guys rest, your troop numbers will increase, but so will all of the other clans' numbers. It might be necessary from time to time to get your numbers back up to snuff, but it's a little defeating to see your foes' numbers go up along with yours, not that it really makes a difference when all is said and done. Once you've decided that your troops are ready to go, you can jump into a battle.

Before you enter the real time part of the game, you'll need to set up your troops. This pre-battle formation set up is kind of nice. There are several army formations you can choose from that are pretty exotic looking and have various tactical advantages. The main problem is that when you actually enter a battle, these fancy schmancy formations end up getting screwed up as you adjust to the movements of the enemy. If you actually want to know how to use the formations properly, there's nothing more you can really do except do a little trial and error to see what formations work in what situations. It seems as though everything breaks down into huge melees in the end anyway, but we'll talk more on that in a sec.

After choosing the formation you wish to bring into the battle, you can choose what sorts of armies to bring with you. In the bottom section of the screen, you'll see the portraits of the generals in your army. If you right click on the portrait, you'll see icons showing the general's skill when it comes to each of the army types, as well as all of the units that are currently under control of the general. If you need a different type of army, like infantry as opposed to cavalry, then you can make the switch. You just have to make sure that you don't give a general troops he doesn't really know how to command as the chances of their demise will be greater.

You can move each of these portraits up into the various slots available in the army formation. When you drop a portrait in one of the slots coinciding with a position in the army such as right flank or the headquarters near your flags, you'll see the section of the formation light up on the mini-map. This shows you exactly where you just dropped those troops and how many of the 40 units that make up the group are actually there. This is a pretty nice feature for setting up your troops as you get the chance to see what your army will look like before you jump into things.

So once you have all of your guys where they need to be and you're happy with the set up of your army, it's time to enter the battle. This is the meat of the game, but in the time I've been playing it, I've been chewing mostly on skin and bone. The maps you play on are all laid out in long rectangles. The only differences you'll get in the maps are some little bits of trees, small inclines in the terrain, rivers, and strongholds. The problem is, none of these are implemented very well and therefore don't really enter into the game in a big way like they should. The fields of battle are small and hold little room for the creativity that I'm used to being able to pull off in real time strategy games. It's hard to move a group of your men around in a flanking maneuver without running into the enemy along the way. It just seems very cluttered without enough room to surprise an unwitting enemy. Not to say I wasn't surprised when enemy troops came running onto the battlefield near my headquarters all of the sudden from off of the playing field.

The siege missions, which could be fun come down to breaking down the doors to the forts as fast as possible so that you can get inside. Only, when you break a door down, the units have a really hard time finding their way in through the door, even if there aren't any enemy units blocking their way. It's very frustrating to see all of your guys bunching at the door, bumping into each other when you want them to get to the other side of the fort to take out the guys holding your other forces out of the other door.

But for the most part, the game will come down to what formations you set your armies up in individually and which units they end up fighting against. And unfortunately, this is where I had the most problems. Moving your troops around the field smoothly just isn't really possible. In order to get divisions of troops to do anything, you have to right click on one of the units in the field or on the portrait of the general in charge. Unfortunately, finding the right general for the troops you're trying to command is exceedingly difficult so you'll have to keep clicking on each of them till you get it right. If you try to right click on one of the units on the battlefield to give commands, you'll miss more often than not causing the screen to recenter itself where you clicked. Eventually you'll get it to work and then you'll have the options to move, switch formations, and posture, and what direction the units face, but it's a pain in the ass getting to that point.

You can also mass-select armies by clicking and dragging so you can try to regroup everyone, but the chances of that really working well aren't great. It takes units a long, long time to recuperate and gather into formation again so you'll suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by an enemy taking advantage of you trying to regroup. And if you don't try to reorganize, you'll most likely end up with a big blob of units fighting in the middle of the battlefield. If it had been easier to give commands to the units, most of this could have been avoided.

The fact that the game is in skybox view where you are zoomed out and overlooking a very choppily animated battle where it is hard to distinguish infantry from one another without giving a second look sometimes just compounds the difficulties of running a successful battle. The units, ground textures, and environmental effects are all sub par and don't add anything to the atmosphere. The same goes for the sound. All of the acknowledgments are the same thing and get very old very quick.

Anyway, during the course of battle, you'll want to keep an eye on your generals because losing these guys is a bad thing. As they go through battles, they'll increase in experience guiding the troop type they went into battle with. Having experienced men in your ranks is a very important piece of the puzzle and shouldn't be overlooked. If one of your generals does die, the most experienced captain below him will rise to take his place, but they won't inspire the same confidence in the troops. This part of the game is really the one thing that I kind of liked. It's always nice to carry units over from battle to battle and watch them grown in power. And it's done in a semi successful way, but I can't say that I ever really got attached to any of my generals which is too bad.

In the end, this game just can't compare to the much better and more complete Shogun. There isn't one thing in this game that comes anywhere near to that game. Even the system requirements are higher on this one and it's 2D... how is that possible? So my suggestion is if you're looking for something in this vein to play, do yourself a favor and grab Shogun: Total War and pass this one up, you'll be much, much happier.